Re: valuable errors

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri Apr 16 08:19:25 1999

Jacques M Mallah wrote (about self-multiplication):
> The situation you described is completely deterministic, much like
>the MWI of QM.

BM:
OK, I completely agree with that. At least if the description of
the situation is conceived as a third person type of description.

> For all practical purposes, a person who is copied should expect
>their future selves to be effectively randomly chosen.

I am glad you agree with that. This is really the first person
indeterminism which appears naturally with comp. (And with MWI).
You note that there is no inconsistency between first person
indeterminism and third person determinism.

Suppose now some person, X0, is copied in (exactly) 1O instances. She
should
expect their future selves to be effectively randomly chosen, as you say,
among the 10 instances: X1, ... X10. (or 11 if the original is not
destroyed).

Do you agree that, whatever the means used to quantify the indeterminism,
the immediate expectation of X will not depend:
     a) neither of the "real"/virtual nature of the reconstitution,
     b) nor of the absence or presence of finite delay of reconstitution?

Thanks for answering so far.

Bruno

PS You say also:
> If you want to talk about what is actually going on though, I
>don't even accept that 'individual identity' carries over from one time
>step of a computation to the next. It's just that the future self or
>selves are sufficiently similar to the current self to motivate an
>interest in his (or their) well being.

I agree too, but I am not trying to know what is actually going on.
I am interested in the practical first person expectations.
I use the notion of "survival" in the thought experiment for
escaping the need to define precisely "individual identity".
Received on Fri Apr 16 1999 - 08:19:25 PDT